That afternoon the kids were being suspiciously quiet, so I went to check on them, half expecting to uncover activity that would necessitate a trip to Home Depot. I heard Nathaniel's voice through the slightly-open door, and something in his tone made me linger a moment.

He was reading! To his sister! Without parental compulsion!

I flung open the door with pride. "So, you're reading to your sister, Nathaniel!"

Both children looked at me impatiently, even aloof.

"Dad, we're trying to read. Leave us alone."

These glimpses of looming adolescence scare me in my young children. I left them.

A week or two went by, and I realized that Nathaniel wasn't reading to Jessica anymore. I asked why not.

"I don't read to Jessica," he said flatly.

"But you had fun reading her The Spooky Old Tree, didn't you?"

"Oh, that," he said as if I should have been able to figure this out on my own. "That was to scare her."